


Thursday's Child

by Shulik



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-07-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 07:55:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shulik/pseuds/Shulik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Effie survives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously guys, heed the rape/ non-con warning. Nothing too graphic, but it's pretty heavily implied. Torture, PTSD type of behaviour.

CHAPTER ONE

 

They bring him in after midnight. 

Effie’s learned how to tell the time, the approximate time, by the changing of the guard. She knows which Peacekeepers are the ones she has to watch out for, huddle back in the darkest corners of her cell, keep her head bowed and her eyes lowered, not speak and not scream. She’s learned how to blend in with the shadows, how to become so small it takes them a long moment to find her when they come into the cell. 

Effie’s learned a lot of things. 

She watches the Peacekeepers dragging a body, a male, with dirty blonde hair and a ripped jacket. He’s slung between their arms, head lolling back and forth. One of his legs is bent at an unnatural angle, through a tear in his jacket- Effie can see angry red burns, slick meat red skin. 

She holds her breath. Waits to see what will happen. 

“Toss him in next to the other one,” one of the Peacekeepers leers at Effie and she flinches back, violently, away from the bars. Her heart is hammering, overtime and terrified in her chest. She holds her breath. 

“Don’t worry Princess,” the Peacekeeper sneers at her and spits into her cell. “Me and you will have our scheduled time tonight.” He laughs, low and unpleasant, an oily sound that sends nails racing up her spine. 

Tears, hot and salty are on her cheeks before Effie can stop them and she shudders, turns away before he can see them. She’s long since learned that some of the men here get off on a crying woman. On a crying escort. This cellblock is almost empty, the only people here seem to be the ones that the Capitol hates most of all- Effie is one of the only women. She’s young still, beautiful despite her wounds and her voice, screamed raw- Effie is the Peacekeepers’ greatest commodity, biggest source of entertainment. 

The sound of the opening cell, the dull thump of them dumping the body into the cell to her right- that’s the only thing Effie hears over the sound of her horrified panting. Her fingers itch, the nailbeds raw and infected from where they had pulled her nails out. 

Effie sucks in a breath. 

+

She has always loved fashion. Loved the way clothes made her feel, the luxury of a well cut swatch of fabric, draping _just so_ on her body and the brightness of a jewel reflected on her breast.  
She wanted to be a stylist, growing up in the Capitol, watched the latest collections with bated breath, biting her nails down to the quick and dreamed of the day when the whole of Panem would have her name on their lips. 

Effie Trinket would be hotter than any of the stylists around. She would be a _sensation_. 

She started taking additional art classes when she turned ten, learning colour theory and fabrics. When she was thirteen, she sent in her application with two of the Capitol’s best designers and then spent the next month frantically checking the mail. 

Effie Trinket was not that talented. She didn’t get in. Didn’t even get a personalized letter of rejection, all she got was a stamp at the end of a generic letter that destroyed her dreams and the  
knowledge that she failed. 

She heard through her friends that the two students who got it were supposed to be _amazing_. Effie didn’t care, it was supposed to be her too damnit. She just needed a chance to prove that she could be amazing too. 

Hell, how good could these Cinna Gold and Portia Rosewood be anyway?

It was only after she met them, that Effie realized she could never have compared to Cinna's genius or Portia's skills. By then, though, it didn't quite matter as much. 

+

She’s lying on the cement floor of her cell, half-curled up, shivering in the naked air. Her throat hurts from screaming, it feels like it’s on fire. Spasms rack her body and she shudders, contracts and whimpers. She’d feel better if she could get to her mattress near the wall, where her clothes have been dumped, unceremoniously like dishrags. It hurts too much to try any sort of movement though. 

Her body is covered in a thin sheen of sweat and Effie can feel the different wounds on her body that have been reopened- her back, covered in cross-crossing red welts that sting at any sort of contact is now bleeding. So are the numerous cuts on her face, her split lip that tastes of metal and salt, the deep gash on her temple from where they had slammed her head against the wall.  
It’s been a while since she’s tried fighting back. She doesn’t know why today was different, why she tried to defend herself again. 

“Hey,” she hears in the silence of the night, “hey- you alright there?” 

Effie lays on her side and listens. If the guards aren’t busy watching one of the broadcasts, she knows the sound of their boot-clad feet, thumping down the hallway as they come in with their batons and their knives. 

There is silence and then Effie hears the faint sound of a tinny, televised voice. 

They’re busy then. 

“Come on, talk to me-“ the voice sounds familiar and something in Effie feels like she’s been there before, in the dark, listening to that voice talk, “ _please_.” His voice breaks. “Just _talk_ to me.”

Some terrible, detached part of Effie’s mind notes how fast he’s began to show weakness. She was hoping for someone that would stay alive until her death. She’s tired of waiting to die alone. 

“My name is Peeta Mellark,” the voice says and Effie’s stomach plummets, falls through the bottom of her feet and leaves no trace of hope behind, “ _talk to me_.” 

She coughs and it feels like razors are slicing up her lungs, shredding the thin membranes of her heart as she struggles to find the words. She licks her lips, tries to get some moisture on them but there’s nothing. Continuous screaming is one of the most dehydrating experiences that you can subject your body to. 

Finally she makes it out past her lips, her name, the only thing that she’s said in the last two months- “Effie… Trinket.” 

There is a silence and then,“Oh God, oh Effie, what are you doing here?” Peeta sounds like he’s sixteen again, the sweet faced baker’s boy on the train. He sounds like he’s trying hard not to show how much the knowledge of her being in prison with him is affecting him. 

Try as she might, Effie can’t picture herself as she was then, young and confident. She was wearing her new outfit, she remembers suddenly, with a sudden and striking clarity that makes her chest twist. She was so proud of it too, the aubergine skirt and the peaplum jacket looked perfect with her new wig. 

“Effie, I’m sorry- can you hear me? I’m so sorry.” She can picture his voice, wide, earnest blue eyes and a guileless smile that managed to disarm the whole of Panem. 

She breathes and listens to him over the wall.

+

They always take him out of his cell for his interrogations. Effie never hears him scream, but she sees him, time and again, hanging between two Peacekeepers, blood dripping down his body as they carry him back to the dungeons. 

Peeta tries to talk to her, during the night, not often, but whenever they hear the Peacekeepers occupied with something else, or after Effie’s had a really hard day. He whispers to her, of forests and clear blue skies, of the smell of fresh baked bread and the richness of flour running through his fingers. Sometimes, when he feels terribly lonely- he talks about being in love. He never says any names or talks about specifics, says anything that could give her away- but Effie knows. She’s watched them enough to know. 

They never torture him in his cell. But they always torture Effie in hers. 

Sometimes, when her brain doesn’t feel like it’s about to leak out of her ears- Effie thinks that they do this so that Peeta can hear her scream. 

One time, they bring in a chair strapped to some sort of apparatus. They force Effie into it, not that it requires much force by this point- she’s all skin and bones and bleeding flesh. They strap restraints around her wrists, around her ankles, her forehead. And then they give her a leather strap to bite. 

It’s only after that Effie realizes, once she comes back to consciousness, that the leather strap was their way of making sure she didn’t bite through her tongue. The official excuse, is of course, that she’s there for information. 

Her skin is still sizzling, still blistered and pure agony to the touch when they place her onto her mattress. The Peacekeepers that do it look green, pale around the edges and their hands tremble as they touch her. It is, as if, for the first time- they’ve began to see what they’re doing to her. 

Effie hopes that she doesn’t wake up. 

+

She was fourteen when she first saw Haymitch Abernathy on screen. It was during the Second Quarter Quell. She was in the hospital during his Games, sick with pneumonia so strong that it brought her down faster than any doctor could diagnose her. She doesn’t remember much of that month in the hospital. 

Haymitch, with his dark hair and his gray eyes and the way he smiled- a little cocksure and a little angry, he was destined to be a heartbreaker. He ran fast, thought quickly and was the favoured underdog of the Quell. Several times, Effie would hear talk about how good looking he was, the lithe way he moved and the glint in his eye as he moved forward in the Game. 

It was only later, once Effie started her training as an escort and began to revolve within Capitol society circles that she realized what would have happened to Haymitch, with his good looks and his smirk and the way he would subconsciously flirt with even the most Augmented of Capitol ladies. Later, Effie would realize that he had done all that to stay alive, him and Maisylee Donner but even then, she wasn’t sure whether the society ladies knew it. 

She saw it in Finnick Odair, the perfect example of what would have happened to Haymitch Abernathy had he had somebody to live for. Snow had made a mistake with him though, had left him no reason to degrade himself and Effie knew, knew surely and with no doubt- even before meeting him, that Haymitch Abernathy would have cheerfully gone to his death before submitting to the whims of the Capitol and it’s demented desires. 

+

She is sitting, huddled into a ball against the far wall, edged as far as she can go into the corner across from her mattress. She’s long since learned that they always look at the mattress first whenever they come in. Not being there buys her few precious moments before they notice her. 

“One, two, three, four,” she hums almost noiselessly against her knees. Her body feels boneless and her head, for once, is clear. 

Effie knows she’s going to die soon. She can feel it in her blood, slowing down on its path to her heart, to her brain. She doesn’t feel dizzy anymore, instead she feels incredibly light, like a balloon that she once got on her birthday. She misses her father, misses the balloons he would get her on her birthday, the dresses he would buy her and how he would always hold her hand before crossing the street. 

She smiles against her knees, her lip is pretty much permanently burst and a thin trickle of blood moves down to her chin. She’s never said anything to them. 

On the periphery of her hearing, Effie can hear explosions, dull thumping ones that move the floor beneath her feet. She rocks back and forth and hums to herself again, “one, two, three, four.” 

People are yelling, some people out there, they’re rough and angry as they move down the hallway and Effie does nothing but smile. She’s so close. 

It sounds like they’re opening all the cells, door slamming against the walls as they’re burst open and Effie smiles at her imagination. 

The cell next to her is burst open and then the shouting dies down, a thick silence in the air that Effie can taste on the tip of her tongue, before it doubles in volume. It sounds like they’re picking Peeta off the floor, moving him out and she hears the word ‘stretcher’. The boots move past her cell, down the corridor and Effie hums a little, secure in the fact that even her imagination knows perfectly well that Peeta is more important to the Revolution than she ever be. 

Her fingers have gone numb. She doesn’t hurt anymore and it’s such a relief, such a sweet, blessed escape from her pain that Effie closes her eyes and listens to the slowly dying sounds of feet moving away. 

She exhales. 

And then Peeta starts screaming her name.


	2. Chapter Two

Effie wakes up screaming, throat raw and bleeding- her world is on fire from the pain. She howls, arching off the bed in a tight bow, back achingly bent into an unnatural angle, tears bursting out of her eyes, gasping in a long, shuddering breath before she screams again. 

There are hands pushing her down, calloused and rough, they’re tight around her wrists and Effie screams, tries to fight- she _does_ but she’s so weak that it’s impossible to resist from being pushed back down. Her spine feels like electricity racing up her nerves, igniting each and every one of them, painstakingly slow and somehow terrifyingly fast at the same time. 

It hurts like hell. 

It is hell. Effie deserves it, she knows that, she’s _always_ known that she deserves everything she got for her sins, for never fighting back, for never resisting. For being weak and taking refuge in pretty colors and not breaking in the spectacular way that those around her wanted her to. 

Still, knowing and believing is very different from the actual experience. Effie sobs and jerks back, tries to open her mouth but there’s a warm and steady hand on her shoulder, pushing her down and then there’s a prick in the crook of her elbow. A tiny, insignificant thing in the grand scheme of everything that Effie’s experienced but she registers it and sucks in a breath before the darkness comes rushing in again. 

She wants her father. 

When she wakes up the next time, it’s to a pair of achingly familiar grey eyes watching her from behind a shadowed, stubbled face. Haymitch looks even worse that he usually does during Reaping days, unshaven with dirty, unkempt hair and an outfit that looks like he’s been sleeping and eating in it for at least a week. 

Effie opens her mouth to tell him that he looks like a slob, but what comes out instead is a croak and she gasps in pain, artificially ventilated air rushing into abused lungs. She starts coughing, doubled over despite the fact that she’s probably pulling her stitches, pulling at her wounds and Haymitch is right there. He must have rushed over because his hands are so oddly gentle on her back that she wants to check whether he’s real, whether her brain hasn’t started hallucinating something particularly complicated near death. 

Though if she was hallucinating, wouldn’t she be picturing the seventeen year old Haymitch? The one with the cocky smirk and the easy laugh, not the one with dirty hair and bags underneath his eyes. She’s too tired to think about it. 

Haymitch pushes a straw into her mouth, “drink, come on Eff, just take a sip,” and Effie does. It’s water and it tastes better than anything she’s ever tasted, sweet and cool as it settles into her stomach. 

“Come on,” he takes the straw away when she’s done and sets the glass by her bed, “lie back.” Haymitch arranges her pillows back in order, still astonishingly gentle, with unpracticed, even awkward movements and Effie’s surprised, watching him with a history of their sixteen years together. This is Haymitch like she’s never seen him before. She’s not sure what to expect and it scares her. 

Sixteen years, dear lord- has it really been that long? Effie bites her lip, watches the grey hairs peppering Haymitch’s head, the new wrinkles near his eyes. There’s a scar, small and angrily red, sitting near his lip. She wants to touch it, instead Effie swallows and looks away. 

He finishes arranging her bed, never looking directly at her and Effie gets that, she _does_. She wouldn’t want to look at herself either. She chances a glance at her hands and blinks, blank and uncomprehending at the sight of them bandaged so tightly, gauze wrapped thickly around her palms and individual fingers. 

“I can’t feel them,” she whispers and tries to move her hands. Her right pinky feels like it might be twitching slightly, but the gauze makes it hard to see any kind of small movement. Effie looks up at Haymitch and swallows back the lump in her throat, “why can’t I feel my hands?” 

His voice is rough, gravel over stone as he speaks, slow and unsure, so unlike his usual biting words that come at her quick and sharp-“ don’t, don’t try to move. It’s nerve damage. They shot you full of drugs once we brought you back, froze them- try to give you a chance to heal. Your fingers,” he clears his throat, swallowing twice before he speaks again, “they’ll never look the same. But they said you should be able to use them again.” 

His voice sounds hollow as he talks about her injuries, listing them one by one in detail like he needs to pronounce what happened to her in order to make it real. Effie listens, drifting in and out, probably on some very good painkillers if the fact that she’s not screaming is anything to go by. 

A memory, long ago and too bright swims up into her consciousness. The 72nd Games, they had two fourteen year olds that died within four minutes of the Cornucopia- Mick Thomas and Mallory Jones. That night, Effie had gone to Haymitch’s room, swaying from the exhaustion of trying to stay awake despite little Mallory’s face flashing behind her eyelids every time she closed her eyes, blood dripping down her chubby child’s cheek from where the Career had taken off her scalp with an axe, and her eyes, the gray eyes of District 12’s Seam children were very wide as she died. Before the Game, Effie had gotten her nails done, an exercise in futility, a way of keeping at least some semblance of control, at least over _herself_. She had gone to a particularly in-vogue manicurist before the Game, one that she’d had to make an appointment with three months in advance for. He had done her nails with a dark beige background, with swirls of crimson running through them. He had said that he was trying to evoke the President’s favorite roses and Effie, uncomfortable, said nothing, paid and left. Once Mallory had died, blood mixing strange patterns against her olive skin, Effie went back to her room and scrubbed acetone against her hands until her flesh stung and her fingers looked nothing more like before. Haymitch said nothing, had closed the door behind her without a comment and only raised an eyebrow at her unusually bare nails before pouring Effie a drink. 

Thirteen years of sniping at each other had taught them all about the lines they couldn’t cross with one another. 

Now he stands, awkward in front of he and doesn’t look down at her face, at what they had done with her face. 

“It’s alright,” Effie says with forced indifference, “you don’t have to stay here, you know? I’m sure I’ll be fine.” She coughs, “where are we anyway?”

“District Thirteen,” Haymitch answers distractedly and then narrows his eyes, “and what do you mean, I don’t have to stay here? Who else is going to sit with you?” 

And there it is, a pain so sharp that it brings tears to Effie’s eyes and she closes them, takes a deep breath and tries not to scream at this boor that’s known her for longer than anyone else in her life and still can’t find anything good to say about her. Shows what kind of person she was, she _is_ Effie thinks bitterly and inhales. If even a drunk can’t stand to be around her, then she doesn’t need him. She doesn’t need anyone. 

She needed him during those months in a dark cell. The only reason why she’s here is because they were rescuing Peeta and he was too much of a bleeding heart to leave the tortured body next door to die on her own. He should have never opened his mouth. 

“Leave,” Effie says to Haymitch and it’s good. Her voice is strong, even and she is unshakeable in her resolve. “I don’t need you.” Once she feels more in control of herself, she opens her eyes again and stares at him, willing him to listen to her for once in his miserable life. “ _Leave_ Haymitch, _now_.”

“Eff, come on,” Haymitch holds up his hands in a gesture of supplication, peace and takes a step closer to her bed, “don’t be like this. You know what kind of asshole I am.” 

Effie grinds her teeth and the action drives an ice pick of pain into her brain. She tries to clench her fists, remembering how it felt to have that kind of control over her emotions and in a dark, empty cell and when nothing happens, because _of course_ Effie doesn’t even have control over her own hands, she feels angry. After months of feeling constantly afraid, terrified- the cleansing feeling of anger feels _wonderful_. 

“I said leave Abernathy,” she hisses, “or don’t you have somebody else that you can inflict the horror of your company on?” 

Haymitch’s expression shutters and then he sneers, the same town drunk that’s embarrassed Effie on more than one occasion. His lip curls back and he steps forward, “what’s the matter _princess_? You still too good for the likes of me?” 

Princess. 

Nausea, thick and bitter rises immediately and her heart is hammering in her chest, terror immediately soaking her in cold sweat as she begins to shake. 

“Effie?” Haymitch steps forward, eyes changing from anger to worry as he takes in her changed posture, the look of pure, animal _fear_ on her face. “Princess?” 

Effie begins to scream. 

+

“You had to be sedated,” Haymitch’s face, even more shadowed and too pale is the first thing that Effie sees when she opens her eyes. She’s laying on her side and Haymitch’s chair has been moved away, further from her bed. He looks like a ruffled bird watching her, perched on his chair as if he’s about to explode into movement at any moment. 

“What happened Eff?” was it something,” he swallows, Adam’s apple working painfully like he’s actually worried about her for once, “was it something _I_ did?” 

Effie moans, her mouth feeling like all the moisture has been sucked out of it. She desperately wants a drink and she blink, looks up at Haymitch and croaks- “water.” 

There’s a jug beside her bed, a little chipped but thankfully full of clear liquid. Haymitch fills up a glass with the water and passes it to her, the same straw from before pressing into her lips as she drinks. 

Her hands shake as she drinks and Effie has to close her eyes, take a deep breath and force herself not to start crying. Effie has never liked feeling helpless, lost and weak. In fact, she has worked her whole life to have power over her circumstances. When she couldn’t become a stylist, she worked hard to become an escort, a career that somebody like Effie never could have achieved without her determination.

It’s true, she did luck out, being born in the Capitol but Effie has never had the kind of money that some of her friends had. She had grown up in a reasonably sized home, the only child of two doctors who hadn’t had the good fortune to have trained as surgeons or as the Capitol called them- ‘Augmentation Specialists’. Point is, cry her a river, but Effie’s never been as rich as Haymitch and the rest of District 12 thought her to be. But she’s always been determined, to succeed, to prove her naysayers wrong. 

She thinks about admitting weakness and thinks about how long it took, to be taken seriously, to have been given 12 as a District, before she could leave training. Effie has never been the kind of fighter that Katniss Everdeen turned out to be, but she has been fighting her whole life. To make herself heard. To stand out. 

She lowers her eyes, doesn’t look at Haymitch’s face and whispers- “princess.” She shudders. “Don’t call me that. That’s what they used to call me,” her voice hardens and she raises her gaze, nostrils flaring as she meets Haymitch’s sickened gaze head on. She has had enough of bowing, cowering. 

“Alright Eff, alright-“ Haymitch’s brows draw together and his limp lanky hair falls forward, obscuring his face, “but you know you’re safe now, right? You know that nobody will ever do anything like that to you again?” 

Effie thinks about growing up with her father, safe and sound in his office. The smell of her mother’s baking, the feeling of her father’s hugs. 

“Don’t say that,” she tells Haymitch tiredly and closes her eyes. It’s a strange feeling, the draining exhaustion of her most primitive fight or flight response. “Nobody can ever guarantee that.”


	3. Chapter 3

It’s at night that Effie moves. 

Laying awake, she stares at her ceiling for hours at a time, waiting for the noises to die down in the infirmary. There are no windows, there wouldn’t be any underground and yet Effie finds herself missing the sunlight most of all. A ridiculous whim, but she wants to feel the wind on her face, wants to smell the flowers growing. 

It isn’t like her. Nothing like her at all, in fact, but Effie thinks that she just wants to be in Twelve again. Walking from the meadow to the path leading to the Victor’s Village, sun shining on her and the impossibility of waking Haymitch up being the only thing that puts her in a bad mood. 

Simpler days. Effie misses them terribly. 

She sighs and shifts over, swings first her right leg and then her left leg down, until all of her toes are touching the cold cement floor. Slowly, ever so slowly- Effie moves her weight onto her feet until she’s standing on her own. She’s been practicing, walking slowly and painfully- at first it was only around her bed, a stiff backed endeavor that left her gasping and sweating in a small huddle, only able to pull herself onto her bed closer towards the morning. Now though, weeks later- Effie’s started making her rounds around her room, walking slowly with her hand guiding her holding on to the wall as she shuffles along. 

It’s hard work, excruciating and painful and Effie relishes every moment of it. She’s tired of feeling weak, of _being_ weak. She’s going to get stronger, if it’s the last thing she does. 

So she walks, quietly and on her own, she does circles around her room until her legs are burning and her arms are shaking from the exertion- and Effie feels for once like she’s not just some Capitol waste of space. She has survived. She’s been through hell and she’s come back. 

Effie’s not about to waste this chance.

+

It’s the seventeenth night since they’ve brought her back and Effie knows something huge is going to go down. People have been especially tense, even the medical personnel and _they’ve_ been trained to be as neutral and calm as possible. 

Effie’s noticed how different these people are. From the Capitol, from the people of Twelve. They’re almost militaristic, rigid in everything they do, their routines, they way they work and interact with one another. 

They have their routines literally tattooed into their skin with a pinkish kind of ink. For a couple of days Effie amused herself by reading all the different people’s instructions and trying to figure out what their role was in the great big cog machine that is Thirteen. She’s gotten bored. She feels sharper, meaner since she’s come back. None of her previous joy is left in her, none of her absolute love for pretty colors or the next hairstyle that she’s going to wear to an interview with Seneca. 

Effie stops moving and sucks in a breath. _Seneca_ \- she hasn’t thought of him in so long, not since a week after she had been thrown in jail and any possibility of Seneca being able to get her out having been blown to smithereens by the Peacekeepers’ nasty laughter at her question. No. Early on, Effie learned that nobody’s going to come for her. She couldn’t depend on a connection to her past to get her out, not Seneca or Plutarch and certainly not Haymitch or any of the rebels. 

Effie has no illusions about how she got out. She knows that it was only because she was _there_ during the attack on the jail block, when the lights had gone out and the gas had been dumped into the Peacekeepers’ station. They were there to get Peeta out, that much Effie’s been able to parse out from the conversations around her- that the Mockingjay, _Katniss_ had a breakdown about what they were doing to Peeta in Snow’s jail and wouldn’t cooperate. Of course they had to stage a rescue effort for him. 

They needed Katniss too much to win the war. 

The fact that Effie was rescued is pure dumb luck, the result of having been placed next to Peeta who’s always been a bleeding heart. It’s not surprising that Peeta remembered her. Through the hazy, pain-filled memories that Effie has of the last days- one thing she _does_ remember is that the times Peeta was lucid, he seemed sorry. 

Effie doesn’t know what they did to him in there, she wasn’t there for _his_ sessions and most of the times that she remembers sharing with him, she’s not sure if they were real or a product of a fevered brain convinced she was about to die. She remembers whispering through the walls, telling Peeta about her father and how he would scoop her up every year on the first day of school and whisper into her ear that it was going to be _‘A big, big, big day’_ and smile. 

Everything is thick after that, the memories become hazier and her head starts to hurt when she tries to remember. 

So Effie doesn’t. She picks up her pace again and starts walking. 

They did something to Peeta, she’s sure of it. She’s been around that boy for too long, had been imprisoned next to him and had hurt him weep at night- there is no way he would have gotten her out of jail and then promptly forgotten about her. What about Katniss? Effie bites her lip. 

Katniss probably doesn’t know and if she does, then she definitely doesn’t care. She is remarkably strong, that girl, resilient and loyal- but she also has a great propensity for casual cruelty. There are few people that Katniss truly feels fondness for, Effie’s not willing to bet that she’s one of them. What was it that she had said when she sent her off to certain death?

_‘I hope they give me a better district next year…’_

No. Katniss would not be someone that would care about Effie’s imprisonment, after all, Effie had never been a part of the inner workings of the rebellion. Had never taken active participation in Haymitch’s little planning sessions, secretive and silent and so thick with the smug surety that they were pulling the wool over the eyes of the entire Capitol. 

Well, didn’t they? Effie scoffs and it is a loud, sharp sound in the silence of the infirmary at night. 

What would have happened had Effie told Haymitch how many times she had caught them, him and Cinna, heads bent low and the thick tendrils of fear practically a spotlight for the Capitol’s all-encompassing eye. She had stayed quiet, had closed the doors she had opened with a soft step and had left. Effie has never been a fighter, she’s always been shallow, concerned with the beautiful things in life and soft-hearted, if her seventeen year weakness is anything to go by. 

She has also never been a traitor. 

Effie shakes her head, clears the stray thoughts from her mind, the unwanted memories and reminders of who she was and keeps walking. She still has more laps to do, she needs to push herself until her legs burn, no longer shaking from her weakness but from the return of her muscles. She’s had surgeries, numerous ones, since coming to Thirteen but Effie isn’t satisfied with what it would mean if she stayed stagnant, waited for her old body to come back. 

It was the body that allowed her to break so easily. This time, Effie wants to be strong. 

 

+

 

Effie is staring at her bare arms when she hears the sound of a throat clearing in her doorway. She doesn’t jump, but she flinches. It’s a minute reaction, probably the result of months of torture but Effie still feels a hot flush of shame at the fact that she is still, instinctively, _weak_.

It’s a girl, taller than Effie with a shaved head and dark challenging eyes. She’s wearing the same uniform that everyone else in Thirteen wears, the grey does nothing for her olive skin tone. She’s also watching Effie with the same half-skittish, half defiant look that Effie is pretty sure she’s been wearing herself. 

“They told me that you were just down the hall but I figured that it would be too much irony even for this place,” she says in a husky voice and that’s when it pings. 

This is Johanna Mason, the District Seven Victor. The girl with the axes. 

“What-“ Effie coughs and clears her throat. She hasn’t been talking a lot, not since that fight with Haymitch. Who disappeared and never came back, but Effie’s not thinking about that. No, she isn’t. Instead, she tries again, clears her throat and asks “what are you talking about?

“Don’t you know?” Johanna quirks an eyebrow and walks into the room, easy like she’s just taking a stroll but Effie’s been relying on her instincts about people to keep her alive for the last couple of months. She sees the way that Johanna immediately moves at an angle, keeping both her and the doorway in view as she casually rambles in, tracing her fingertips over the sparse furnishings in Effie’s hospital room, the distracted hunch to her shoulders, the thin sheen of sweat on her forehead. 

“-and I was on the other side,” Johanna’s still talking, so Effie makes an effort to tune back into the conversation. “It was you, then Peeta, then me. Cell-buddies, torture buddies and now we get to be hospital buddies again!” she bares her teeth in what’s probably the worst approximation of a smile that Effie’s ever seen. 

“Are you concussed? Because the words coming out of your mouth make me wish that you were,” Effie says, because she doesn’t feel like having somebody else ruin her day. She can do that very well on her own, thank you very much. 

“What?” Johanna side eyes her and picks up a little paper rose that Effie had been working on for the last two days, trying to rebuild some of the dexterity in her fingers. “Kinda?” she squints. “I mean, there was a lot of hitting my head into the cement- so I’m _pretty_ sure that things aren’t as secure upstairs as they should be. But I’m doing better, that’s what _all_ the good doctors down here tell me!” she puts down the rose and beams at Effie. It doesn’t look real either. 

“Why are you talking to me?” Effie narrows her eyes at her. “I’m from the Capitol, don’t you remember?” 

“Oh yeah,” Johanna scoffs and gestures at Effie’s inefficiently thin gown, her bony knees sticking out with the white bandages still wrapped around her flesh. “Cause you’re looking really Capitol friendly there hotshot. Look, I know you have no reason to believe me but I’m not lying. I was there with you. You and Peeta,” Johanna swallows painfully, the prominent bones in her sunken cheeks working hard as she fights to get her next words out, “and _me_. We’re the ones that were locked up, tortured like animals. _Worse_ than animals. We’re the ones that know how bad it was. Yeah, the rebels down here think that they’re the ones experiencing the worst of this war- but they don’t know. What’s it’s like, going through what we did. They weren’t _there_. We were.” 

“I heard that Twelve was firebombed, only eight hundred of them survived-“ Effie offers unsurely. She’s seen Nurse Everdeen and Primrose, it’s good that they got out. Katniss wouldn’t have been able to go on without them either. 

Johanna leans forward, eyes a little dark and mouth twisted into an unhappy moue. “Listen, I’m only going to say this once again and it’s only because I heard you scream for two months straight. That’s it. You’re getting more out of me than most others do. _Yeah_ , what happened to Twelve was terrible- but it’s done with. It’s over. Either the people died, or they watched their home burn down from a fucking _lake_. It’s awful, but it’s the same thing that’s going on across the whole fucking country. We’ve been through hell, every day, literal hell. They’ve cut us, burned us, electrocuted us, drowned us and _hurt_ us in every fucking way possible-“ her eyes glimmer strangely this close up and it’s with a shock that Effie recognizes the look in them. 

Johanna Mason, the hard girl who survived her whole family’s murder, the girl who took on Katniss Everdeen during the Quarter Quell and won- she looks like she’s about to cry. 

“ _Every day_ I would hope to die, every single minute and don’t you for one fucking second dare tell me that you didn’t want the same damn thing!” Johanna spits out and steps away, chest heaving as shudders run through her body. 

She wraps her arms around herself and Effie notices how similar their scars are, the way that the scars on the soft, inner flesh of Johanna’s elbows run. They’re the same kind of scars that Effie has, remnants of a sharp blade cutting into her skin with surgical precision. The dotted, puckered scars of cigarette burns on Johanna’s bony clavicles, where the skin runs right over the bones and it hurts the most and heals the hardest. Effie subconsciously rubs at her own and breathes.

They were on the same floor, the scars prove that at least. The handiwork of some very determined Peacekeepers. Effie was the only female for months before they brought Johanna. Was this why they had stopped ra-… she stops herself. 

Bites her lip hard enough to draw blood and then offers, looking up at Johanna’s strange, unfamiliar, agitated face. The girl with the same scars as Effie. 

“Do you know how to play chess?” Effie finally asks. “Plutarch brought me a set, only I haven’t had the stomach to deal with people lately… Do you know how to play?” 

“No,” Johanna shakes her head and then she smiles, sits down on the edge of Effie’s bed and says- “but I’m a fast learner.”


	4. Chapter 4

“How old are you?” Johanna’s face is shadowed angles, dark eyes and a scar that runs from her temple into the faint fuzz of her hair. She’s sitting in the chair to the left of Effie’s bed, the one that Haymitch sat in, but where Haymitch was his usual sprawl of impatient limbs- Johanna’s curled into a small lump, legs tucked underneath her. 

“Thirty two,” Effie tells her, smiling bitterly when Johanna’s eyebrows ratchet up in surprise. 

“The makeup made you look older,” Johanna says bluntly, as is her way. She leans forward and examines Effie’s face with a critiquing eye. “You’re a lot prettier without it too.” 

Johanna’s eyes are shuttered today, no real expression in them as if showing emotions is just too hard. It’s a bad day. She has many of those, she told Effie but that’s fine. 

So does Effie.

Today though, today Johanna looks worse than she’s had before. Effie doesn’t know what happened, nobody brings down any news of what’s going on above ground

“The makeup has always been a great shield,” Effie idly runs a hand over her sheets, “nobody thinks to look too hard at the girl wearing fifteen pounds of caked on foundation and blue shadow.” She smiles a little bit, bittersweet- “besides, I’ve got freckles otherwise and they tend to stand out unless I really pack on the sludge. The Capitol isn’t too fond of freckles. It’s not _haute_.” 

Johanna nods, staring at the space behind Effie’s left ear. She looks like she’s thinking hard about something. 

“Effie,” Johanna licks her lips and when she looks up, Effie can see that her eyes are guarded, wary and at the same time very, very worried, “do you know what’s going on outside of the infirmary?” 

“No,” Effie shakes her head ruefully, “the soldiers posted outside our unit won’t let me leave.” It’s true. She tried leaving ten days after being brought to the Thirteen infirmary, only to see where she was, maybe try and track somebody down who knows who she is. That she’s still alive. The soldiers stopped her, both young men with similarly colored red hair, both wearing Coin’s insignia. 

Oh Effie’s learned about who the people in power are, of course she has. She’s ex-Capitol, that means it’s _instinctual_ for her to orient herself as quick as possible in a new power situation, where her life may be dependent on whoever is at the helm at the time. She is thirty two years old and she’s survived this far. 

“They’ve found Snow,” Johanna says after a pause.

Effie stops moving, forgets to breathe and turns into one giant mass of terror. 

“He’s here, under Coin’s own personal guard- waiting to be executed tomorrow morning,” Johanna picks at a loose thread in her uniform, twitches and then drops it. She stares at Effie with a pair of huge, angry brown eyes, breathless and excited and at the same time very, very scared. “He’s _here_ Eff, you know what that means right?” 

They both do, that’s the thing. 

Snow is the horror that both of them are still running from, the man who put both of them (and Peeta) behind bars, the man who ordered the worst kind of torture for them. He’s here, he’s caught and yet both Effie and Johanna know that they’re not safe. Not really. Not from the kind of violence that’s been wrought upon them, beaten into their bones and etched into their skin. Coriolanus Snow might be caught but there are still other monsters out there. Other rulers with aspirations of complete and total control. 

Effie glances at the bracelet around her wrist, the words ‘ _mentally unstable_ ’ and ‘ _confined to infirmary_ ’ starkly dark against the whiteness of the plastic circle. The breath is stuck in her throat and she leans sideways, catches the sight of the slightly cracked open door and the soldiers’ station beyond it. 

She has not been outside the infirmary since they brought her back to Thirteen. 

Is this a new prison? Effie pulls a little at her bracelet and it doesn’t give. 

Of course it wouldn’t. 

“What’s going to happen to me?” it slips out, unbidden and soft and Johanna flinches before rising off her chair, padding softly towards the door and closing it with a firm hand. She turns around and takes a deep breath. 

“They’re talking about punishing everyone that was involved in the old regime, the people behind the scenes of the Games. Everyone.” Johanna doesn’t look at her with pity, not her- she’s survived the Hunger Games, survived torture and Effie is so damn grateful for her bluntness that it feels a little bit like being washed clean. 

No matter wondering about what’s going to happen to her, what the future holds. 

“Execution,” Effie says slowly, “they’re going to execute us.” 

“No,” Johanna jerks forward, shaking her head in denial- “not _you_. God, Eff, you were captured for them. Tortured for them.” She crouches down, gaze imploring as she stares at Effie from eye level- “Effie, you _knew_ what was going on and you never spoke. You didn’t break. You’re one of us now. They’re working on excusing you, getting you pardoned.” Johanna is breathing hard, eyes wild as she tries to promise the impossible. 

Effie never would have thought the day would come when she would think of the District 7 victor with something like affection. Johanna, she of the quick murders and the sly faced taunts- she has shared something that nobody ever will have in common with Effie. But it’ll be better this way, less time to worry about this means that there’s less time for Effie to really get attached. 

They’ve taken too much from her as it is. 

Back in that cell, she used to kneel on the ground, cover her ears with her hands and squeeze her eyes as tightly as she possibly could. It made no sense at the time, there was no possible way to hide from what was coming and yet, the reptilian part of Effie’s brain, what had been left behind after everything else was carved away- it howled, shook in the loudest horror and rage imaginable and tried to hide, bury itself as deep as possible into the shadows of her cell. 

Effie remembers that feeling of pent up fear, helplessness. 

“Well,” she takes a deep breath and then slowly lets it out. Unbidden, a smile rises onto her lips. “That’s just fine.” 

Johanna eyes her with distaste, “ _god_ ,” she says disgustedly, “I would really, really love to smack you right now, but I’m afraid it’s going to make the brain damage worse. What the _hell_ do you mean it’s _fine_? I know they’ve been pumping us all full of weird crap to keep us calm, but they should really take a look at your dosage- hotshot, cause you’re talking bullshit right about now!” 

Effie laughs. She feels free at last. 

 

+

 

That night, she has a dream. It’s a dream within a dream. She used to have a lot of those when she was younger, when her father was kept away at work for too long and her nanny would sit downstairs, sipping at luridly colored cocktails and watching Capitol paid programs.

This time, Effie dreams of pain and darkness and a whip that strips away at her back, hit after hit. And then, she wakes up, gasping as somebody’s hands try and soothe her out of her ravaged mind- nightmare pulling her back with sticky fingers. 

She sucks in a breath and that’s when it hits her, the scent. Who’s there, looming uncertainly out of the darkness. Cheap soap, the unmistakable tang of gun oil, a little bit of sweat and Haymitch underneath it all- wild grass and cool breezes, wet soil. This is how Effie knows its a dream, she's had plenty of the ones starring Haymitch rescuing her. 

“You alright Eff?” Haymitch rumbles uneasily, frowning as he smooths the short strands of her sweaty hair away from her face. They had to give her a haircut once they brought her in, all of her hair- the hair that she painstakingly kept safe, wore wig after wig to fit in with the Capitol’s ridiculous fashions without damaging her own hair color. The hair color that she got from her father. It’s gone. 

Effie doesn’t like to think about what long hair meant in prison, but the first time that she looks at her new self in the mirror- blue eyes huge in her thin face, reddish blonde hair cut so close to her scalp that she can see the faint burns on her temples- she flinches. The round, circular marks left by the electrode attachments. The puckered scars on the back of her neck where they held her down and stubbed their cigarettes against the soft flesh. She looks nothing like herself anymore.

She tries to ask him what he’s doing, but no words will come. It’s a dream. That’s fine. The Haymitch in her dreams always knows what she’s thinking anyway.

“You were having a nightmare,” Haymitch shrugs flushing at her raised eyebrow, doesn’t let go, keeps stroking the soft hair, carefully skirting around Effie’s still healing scars. 

“Now I know I’m dreaming,” Effie smiles and leans into his hand, ignores the twinge in her stitches and just _rubs_ against his palm, marveling at the simplicity of the contact. 

“How’s that, sweetheart?” Haymitch looks floored at what she’s doing, grey eyes gleaming as he holds his breath, watches Effie take comfort in his skin. That’s fine. She used to dream of this version of him before prison, reticent and awkward- as close to the real Haymitch as she was ever likely to get. The one she dreamt of in her cell, Effie knows he wasn’t the real thing, much too heroic and foolhardy- he was the result of hoping for salvation and a memory muddled with pain. 

“You don’t smell like booze,” Effie smiles up at him and presses a small kiss onto the tender skin of his inner wrist. In her dreams, she is brave. 

Haymitch shivers and carefully sits down onto her bed, making sure that his weight isn’t jostling her. “This alright?” he gestures at her bandages. “I’m not hurting you none, am I?” 

“No,” Effie shakes her head, “I actually don’t need them anymore, but the nurse wrapped my hands up extra special tonight. Used a cream that Fulvia brought, it’s supposed to camouflage my scars.” She grins bitterly, “make sure that when Effie the stylist goes out there tomorrow, I look exactly like the Capitol trash I am, walking to my death.” 

“What? Hey, no- stop that,” Haymitch shakes his head, “don’t even think that.” He looks incredibly, undeniably distressed. “I’m going to get you out of this Eff, don’t you doubt it… Me and Plutarch? We’re doing everything we can to keep you safe,” Haymitch looks at her, doesn’t look away- “you trust me right?” 

The smile that Effie feels bursting out is huge, bright as the sun and it feels like it should be lighting the room up. Instead, the only lights around them are the dimmed artificial ones embedded into the floor, bright enough to move around, but not as bright as to waste energy. Of course not. This is Thirteen after all. 

“What’s so funny?” Haymitch asks uncertainly. There’s a small quirk to the side of his mouth, hovering there like he can’t decide whether he should smile with her or not. 

“That you even have to ask me that,” Effie giggles and oh wow, the pills they gave her in preparation for tomorrow are something else. She feels light, full of air like she’s just going to float away. 

“Silly,” Effie lifts her hand and cups Haymitch’s unshaven jaw. She has never pictured him looking differently, that’s the thing- it’s always been him just as he is. 

“Well, that’s one name that you’ve definitely never called me-“ Haymitch huffs and rolls his eyes. 

“I can call you whatever I want,” Effie yawns and pats Haymitch’s head, “I’ve been stupid for you since I was fourteen years old, I think I’ve earned the right.” She huddles into her blanket and yawns again. She just wants to sleep, without the dreams- she doesn’t want to be tired for what’s coming. 

“What?” Haymitch demands, shrinking back. “What are you talking about, fourteen years old?” 

“I didn’t watch your games when I was eight, I was in the hospital.” Effie’s eyes are closing, she feels so tired. “I only watched them as part of my escort training. I saw you when I was fourteen, the sixteen year old version of you- smug and angry and the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever seen. That's when I knew...” Effie smiles into her pillow, feels her head growing heavy and that pleasant lull in her consciousness that tells her she’s about to drop off into deep sleep, the kind without dreams and memories. 

Haymitch sounds like he’s choking but Effie’s too tired and too heavy to wonder what her subconscious is doing now. She sleeps. 

Doesn’t dream again.

 

+

In the morning, Plutarch brings her a gold wig and what looks like an outfit taken straight from the Capitol. He closes the door on Fulvia’s outraged face and raises a hand to his lips. Effie nods, she trusts him. 

He takes out a little black bug, puts it on the table and presses an invisible switch on it. The air starts smelling of charged ozone. 

“We don’t have much time,” Plutarch takes her hands, holds them close to his wide chest. His forehead is sweating and his fingers tremble slightly. That’s the only indication she has that the Head Gamemaker is nervous. He’s always been very, very good at covering up his emotions.

“Listen to me Elizabeth,” and Plutarch is probably the very last person who remembers Effie’s given name. The name that her father used to use. He talks fast, voice low despite the disruptor on the table. “We have a team of stylists, they’re going to help you get ready. Make sure that you look like the old you. You’re going to go into Katniss’s quarters, fire her up- try and get the old Mockingjay back for us, would you? She needs to feel like she’s back in the games, that you’re about to send her to fight for her life. She needs to feel that strong again.” Plutarch squeezes her hands, his voice is a little bit shaky as he continues- “ _we_ need her to be strong again.” 

There’s too much riding on this, too much riding on _her_ and Effie starts to shake. She can feel her breaths shuddering against her chest, a painful sensation that reminds her that she’s just not ready for something like this. 

“I can’t,” Effie shakes her head, “please, no- I can’t.” She tries backing away from him, but Plutarch follows her. He looks smaller than ever, pale and stretched thin- like everybody else in this war, the effects of what they’ve been doing are taking their toll on Plutarch Heavensbee. 

“Here,” he drops a small white pill into her hand, “take this. It will calm you down.” He stops her from backing away, “we _need_ you to do this for us. Everyone’s freedom depends on Katniss being strong.” 

Plutarch bundles her closer and drops a kiss on the top of her head, he then whirls around, opens the door to face the rageful face of Fulvia and leaves. Fulvia stares at Effie for a moment, part angry and part scared. 

“ _Please_ ,” she finally murmurs, whisper soft and by the time Effie’s lifted her head in astonishment- Fulvia’s gone. 

+

 

Effie takes the pill. It’s some sort of relaxant, it makes her spacey and when the team of stylists bundle her into her bathroom- she does nothing but giggle as they strip her of her hospital uniform and remake Effie the torture victim and recent prisoner back into Effie the Capitol escort. 

It’s only when she sees Katniss, sees the girl’s fresh scars, the burns on her arms and the puckered marks on her flesh so like Effie’s own that she fully understands what’s at stake. Why she has to play the farce. Katniss _needs_ her to be what she always was to her, a symbol of the Capitol but one that’s not dangerous. Katniss needs to be strong. 

Everything is riding on her. 

So Effie smiles, despite the drugs that are making her loopy and she manages not to fall face first into a wall. “It’s a big, big, big day” she says with as much of her old enthusiasm as she can muster. 

Katniss lets her help, doesn’t yell at Effie about the schedule they need to stick to. The clipboard is heavy in Effie’s hands and they tremble as she walks briskly down the corridors for the first time since she’s been brought here, following the soldier that Plutarch pointed out to her earlier. 

“Come Katniss, in we go- don't be shy” Effie trills out and ushers her into a room, a large viewing area with a thick stand in the middle and the faint shape of a man slumped to the side of it. She doesn’t look at it, keeps her eyes trained on Katniss Everdeen- the girl on fire, makes sure that she's handed off to the next set of hands in this charade and goes to find a good hiding spot. 

She sees Haymitch leaning against a pillar, slouchy pose perfect and their eyes meet. He hasn’t come since their argument, hasn’t even stopped in to say hello, ask her if she’s still alive, if she’s healing. She’s always known that Haymitch Abernathy was a selfish son of a bitch, but this just confirmed it. His eyes are hot on her, an unnamed emotion deep within that Effie's too exhausted to decipher. 

Behind her, the cheers start for Snow’s death. 

Effie meets Haymitch’s eyes, stands taller and walks away. 

 

+

She starts running as soon as Katniss turns her bow on Coin. 

She doesn’t get far. There’s an elbow in her face, a sharp burst of pain and then Effie drops into blessed darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

“Jesus, sweetheart- you’ve got to stop getting knocked around like that-” Haymitch is the first thing she hears and sees when she comes to, because _of course_ Effie’s life works like that. It’s been _fine_ that Haymitch has been avoiding her like a plague, totally fine. She has Johanna now- and oh my god… she sucks in a breath. 

Katniss killed Coin instead of Snow. 

“What happened? Why did she-..” Effie stops speaking and tries to sit up, wincing when something at her wrist tugs her back. She glances down, entirely unsurprised to discover that she’s now apparently handcuffed to her bed. 

“Sorry about that,” Haymitch rubs at the back of his neck, a nervous gesture of his, more than a decade running. “I tried to explain that you had nowhere to run, but they all got a little overzealous.” He clears his throat. “We’re on lockdown after Katniss’s little gesture of rebellion.” 

Effie looks at him and lifts up her index finger, gesturing silently at the ceiling, asking whether it’s safe to talk. 

Haymitch wriggles his wrist in a ‘so-so’ gesture, eyes still dark. He lifts his lower half off the chair, reaches into his pocket and brings out a small notebook. He flips over a page and scribbles something before holding it up for Effie to read. 

It says: _‘Beetee has the cameras on loop while I’m here- it’s just going to look like we’re talking while you lay in bed. We’ve left a couple of the bugs running though, can’t mess with the sound without them getting suspicious.’_

Effie nods at him before taking a deep breath. She gestures for his notebook and when it’s in her hands, she quickly writes- ‘ _What’s going to happen to us?_ ’

Haymitch takes the notebook out of her hands, frowns- ‘ _We’re working on keeping you safe. The situation went to shit real quick, what with the mockingjay losing her goddamn mind without bothering to let any of us know ahead. But I’m trying to keep you safe as much as I can._ ’

Effie’s stomach plummets as she reads the words. The world outside must be really getting desperate if Haymitch is risking talking about it. Suddenly cold, she tries wrapping her arms around herself, forgetting about the cuff on her wrist. She accidentally ends up slamming the still tender skin of her arm against the metal and hisses, a jolt of pain racing up her elbow from the impact. Effie curls into herself, an instinctive reaction to a sharp pain, one that she never would have had before but has to deal with now. 

It’s like a fog descending on her, thick and heavy as it wraps its treacherous fingers around her throat and threatens to never let go. 

Haymitch’s hand stops her from moving, all heat and rough skin as his fingers as he grips the back of her neck. It’s not tight, just a firm embrace but his touch startles her, soothes her and unconsciously, Effie finds herself leaning back into it. 

Effie inhales.

Haymitch’s stubble is as much a part of him as his ever-present bottle of booze and Effie had once spent a very drunken night when she was twenty four trying to figure out what his scent was. The underlying, clean smell of him that she would sometimes catch if she had managed to find him very early in the mornings, before he would bring out the white liquor. She had spent too many nights thinking of it, imagining it, trying to figure it out. 

Eight years later, Effie realizes what it is. 

He bends low, hair that’s way past due for a cut falling into his eyes and he balances on the edge of her bed, careful not to jostle her. He’s so careful this Haymitch, so gentle with her- this version of the man that she’s known for ten years and dreamt of for almost eighteen. It scares her more than anything they had dreamt up of back in prison. Scares her viscerally, that gut-wrenching panic of loving the same man for so long and knowing that he will never feel the same way about her, knowing that she represents everything he hates about his world. That panic, that fear- its instinct. The part of her brain that kept her alive through hell, like an animal trapped- it tells her to fear this. 

Nothing ever changes for the better. Nothing good will come of this. And yet she still can’t help herself. He smells like grass and wet soil, like a forest in the spring. 

His beard tickles against her skin and his scent is as close to home as Effie has ever felt. Will ever feel. So she allows herself this, this one moment of weakness. She turns her face into him, takes a deep breath and when Haymitch does nothing, doesn’t move away- Effie pulls at him, at his shirt’s collar, bringing his face down to her until he hovers just above. 

“Please,” Effie whispers, barely loud enough to be heard, “ _please_ Haymitch…” 

If the world has truly ended, if she’s going to die- then Effie will die knowing what she has been wondering about for half her life. 

“Damn it,” Haymitch whispers into her hair, the short buzz cut of it sticking up in an even layer that makes Effie miss her wigs terribly. 

He smells like a forest, like spring mornings in nature and he kisses like wildfire. He pulls her face to him, strong fingers tilting her chin _just_ so, lips greedily devouring her, somehow both hot and soft as he plunders her mouth. He swallows her moans, her whimpers, swallows her passion and the fire burning in her, the flame low in her belly until it’s spread between the two of them. Her heart, pounding wildly in her chest feels like it’s about to jump out of her, take flight and leave. Go with Haymitch, perch in his breast pocket and listen to the steady beat of him, take solace in his heat and be protected. Effie wants to wrap herself in him, surround herself with the very essence of him- strong, angry and so jaded after years of pain that sometimes it feels like he will never fully be whole again. 

Effie, never one to think of herself as a true romantic, feels like a young girl again. Foolish and carefree, eager for the freedom and complete abandonment within Haymitch- she wants to be whole again. For him, for herself. For the girl that she used to be and the woman that she’s become. The woman she doesn’t know. 

Haymitch kisses greedily, a little sloppy with years of disuse, tongue weaving slow patterns on the inside of Effie’s mouth as he breathes her in, swallows her whole. It’s everything she’s ever dreamed of, in the dead of night- on the trains, in her cold room back in the Capitol. In the small apartment that she had decorated so painstakingly. 

The handcuff keeps her chained to her bed, otherwise Effie’s not sure what she would do. She’s already given up on keeping quiet, small whimpers escaping her as Haymitch moves down her neck, laving at her sensitive skin with his tongue, softly biting the soft shell of ear, alternating between taking her ear into his mouth and nipping at it. The sweetest torture possible, leaving Effie a half-melted mass of bones and heated flesh on her bed, wanting more, wanting to never stop. This moment should never be over, she thinks dizzyingly, terrifyingly and then, immediately afterwards- she knows with a terrifying surety that it can’t last. 

Haymitch groans as he pulls away from her before she can, shaking his head in regret as he goes. His grey eyes look black in the dim lighting of her room, pupils dilated until all she can see are the inky pools of his desire. Heady, she throws her head back and watches him through narrowed eyes, feeling like a goddess as her chest heaves trying to catch her breath. 

“I have to leave,” Haymitch pronounces regretfully, staring hungrily at her. “Now,” he swallows and stands up, surreptitiously adjusting himself until Effie can’t stop herself from grinning. 

_She_ did that. She had that effect on him. Effie Trinket, Capitol born and raised, has made Haymitch Abernathy lose control. 

“You think it’s funny?” Haymitch growls at her, eyeing her supine body with the kind of hunger Effie never thought she’d see from him. 

Effie licks her lips, loving the way his eyes track the movement. She feels drunk on the power she has over him in that moment, boneless and restless. She wants to take him whole, wants to immerse herself in him until there’s nothing in between and they become one. 

It’s a terrible description, something out of the fantasies of teenagers in the Capitol, and Effie who has only ever wanted one man despite those two years spent losing her mind with Seneca- she wants to feel like this is possible. 

“I think it’s hilarious,” she stretches, smiling as Haymitch sucks in a breath and takes a step closer to her. He stops instead, reaching into for the small notebook and pen with a look of regret. He rips the paper out, stalks forward and leans towards her. He kisses her forehead, and curls her fingers around the piece of paper that he puts into her hand. 

He doesn’t turn around as he leaves and this time, Effie knows it’s because he’s tempted to stay. 

When the door shuts behind him, she rolls to her side and throws her covers over her head. She waits until a good twenty minutes have passed before unraveling the paper, squinting beneath her coverlet like a child. 

Haymitch’s writing is the same untidy scrawl that she remembers from the very first contract she signed when she was twenty one and still full of the belief that District Twelve meant great things for her future. 

_‘I’m doing everything I can to keep you safe._ ’ the note reads. _‘I l- Please trust me._ ’ 

Haymitch had lied to her about the rebellion, had kept everything quiet until the moment when the Peacekeepers barged into her apartment and dragged Effie out, a linen bag covering her head to hide her identity. It had smelled like blood, that sterile looking bag and Effie had known that she wasn’t coming back alive the moment she inhaled her first, pained breath as they dragged her out of her building. The Capitol had never wanted the rebels to know what had happened to her, it was in their best interest that Effie Trinket much like other fools of circumstance like her disappeared without a trace. 

Haymitch had also saved her life time and again. He had been there during the nights that Effie had cried, hysterical at the thought of sending more children to their deaths. He had stayed in her room, sat in her bed and let her cry herself to sleep as she lay with her head on his lap. Both of them had their bad days, Haymitch’s had always just been more visible than hers. 

_Capitol ladies never show their upset. Emotional displays are not proper_ \- Effie remembers her childhood training, the escort manuals written in pretty, flowery language. She lays there, thinking, mind turning in ending circles of ‘what ifs’ until she can do nothing more but surrender to the headache encroaching on her vision. She’s never had a choice in this, not since she first saw Haymitch’s bloodied face on the vid-screen, not since she had first opened her mouth and sent a child off to his death. 

There has never been another choice, Effie thinks, suddenly content, at peace. She raises the paper to her mouth and systematically bites off small pieces of it, chews them and swallows them. There can be no trace of this conversation, they’ve already given the microphones too much of themselves. The ink tastes salty on her tongue and she falls asleep with a smile on her face. 

 

\+ 

 

The next morning, Johanna swans into Effie’s room trailed by a red-headed soldier wearing camouflage, with a large rifle slung behind his back and carrying a black duffle in his hands. He ignores Effie, drops the duffle closer to the other wall and then holds the door open for another redhead who’s wheeling a bed through the doorway. 

“Johanna, what-?” Effie sits up, eyes wide as she watches the proceedings. “What’s going on?” 

Johanna slouches towards Effie’s bed, slumps down on it and proceeds to sprawl with her usual feline grace, taking up more than half the space. She winks at Effie, “it’s a surprise…” Somehow, despite the joviality of the gesture- Johanna seems tense, on edge, like she’s walking a tightrope and trying to be as careful as possible not to let it show.

Effie stays quiet. They both watch the redheads, and watching them work Effie realizes that they’re definitely brothers or at least related if the ease with which they move around each other is anything to go by. They set up the bed on the other side of Effie’s room and leave. 

The first redhead hesitates by the door though, doesn’t move and doesn’t breathe. He looks like he’s fighting with a decision, if the hard line of his jaw is anything to go by. He’s broad shouldered and the military style jacket he’s wearing makes his pale skin glow. 

“It’s alright,” Johanna says with a smile, a real one, nothing sharp in it- “this is where I want to be.” 

“You sure about that Jo? You sure you want to stay here?” he doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t look at Johanna and it’s with a start that Effie realizes it’s because of her. Because Johanna is sitting next to a Capitol traitor, effectively covering her, blocking her from sight. 

“I’ll see you later,” Johanna sighs and Effie sees a quick sliver of hurt in her, lightning fast before its gone, smile dropping off her face as quick as it had appeared. 

He leaves. Doesn’t look back. 

Johanna’s face is a carefully constructed blank, dark eyes neutral as she digs through her pockets and brings out a small key with a flourish. She leans over Effie, practically drapes herself over Effie’s body and works the key into the handcuff. It falls off her hand, bouncing off the bed with a metallic clang and both of them watch it land. 

It feels like it’s a little easier to breathe. Strange how the smallest things can make the largest difference. 

“What’s going on Johanna?” 

Johanna turns a large, bright smile on her, so fake that Effie actually flinches away from the younger woman. “We’re going to be roommates,” Johanna says jovially before hopping off the bed, “it’s going to be fun.” She crouches beside the black duffle and roots around in it with an absent furrow of her brows. 

“Roommates?” Effie frowns. She has no idea what’s going on, what’s happening. Johanna was imprisoned like her, but unlike Effie- she’s also one of the key figures of the rebellion. 

A past Victor, a prisoner of war and they’ve put her into the same room as a traitor? It makes no sense. 

“Yes,” Johanna straightens up with two familiar looking devices in her hands, one of which she drops on Effie’s lap. This time, the sharp grin on her face isn’t quite as fake as the other one. The happy one. 

This smile is all Johanna, blood and violence and too much pride. “I _specifically_ requested you as a roommate.” 

Mind whirling with possibilities, Effie picks up the device, recognizing it as a modified version of a reader. Back in the Capitol, readers had been popular with a particular set of society- bored ladies with too much time on their hands. They used to devour romance novels with muscled men and frail looking ladies on the cover. Half the novels used Finnick Odair as the model for the male hero. 

Effie had never been able to lose herself in any of the stories, having seen Finnick as a human and not as the sexual symbol that the rest of the Capitol insisted on seeing him as. 

Five years ago, she had been leaving the viewing area through the back stairway, trying to avoid seeing Seneca after their breakup when she had seen him. Sitting in the stairwell, face deathly pale, he looked more like a wax sculpture than a real human being. Effie had seen Cromwell Afort approach Finnick during the earlier party. His large, sweaty hands shook as he introduced himself to Finnick, face red as his bulbous blue eyes practically devoured the Capitol’s favorite Victor. Later, Effie had heard rumors that Afort had slipped Finnick his room key and Fininick had taken it, laughing with his sun-bronzed skin and teal colored eyes. In the stairwell, he was silent. The laughter was gone and his hands, wrapped tightly around his knees were white from the pressure. Effie had hesitated before climbing beside him, sitting quietly on the step next to Finnick as the both of them thought about their failures, about what waited for them. She had said nothing, there was nothing to say- the cameras were recording their every move after all and it was practically a guarantee that at least one item of Finnick’s clothing was bugged at any given time. They sat silently, side by side and slowly, carefully, Finnick’s hands loosened and color had started seeping back into his cheeks. He stopped looking like death warmed over, like a fake of the real, beautiful boy and started looking more like himself again. Before he left, he bent low and placed a careful kiss on Effie’s cheek. It felt like brotherhood, absolution, unity. There was nothing sexual in it, and more than ever- Effie wanted to protect the person next to her, keep him safe from what he had to do, keep him away from the leering eyes of the world and tell him that his body belonged only to him once again. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. They both knew that. So Finnick straightened his shoulders and ran a hand through his curls, tousling them so that once more, they looked like he was constantly ready to be ravaged, constantly on the lookout for his next great passion. The mask slid back onto his face effortlessly and he was beautiful and blank again. He threw one last smile at Effie over his shoulder before opening the door and walking back in. The level of noise practically exploded as people caught sight of him before the stairwell door closed shut. The most beautiful boy in the country. 

Effie’s heart broke for him. 

They hadn’t said anything to each other at all. 

“Why don’t we read something, take it easy? You look like you could use your rest,” Johanna’s voice cuts into Effie’s memory, erases the sharp tug of immeasurable fondness and terrible sadness for them all. 

Effie watches Johanna move towards the bed. The reader looks foreign in her hands, like she hasn’t had time to get used to it. 

This is not how Johanna Mason likes to spend her free time, the thought beats feverishly against her mind. Effie takes a deep breath and turns her reader on. On the other side of the room, it looks like Johanna is having some trouble finding the ‘on’ button. 

“Right,” Effie says under her breath. 

Johanna slides the button on the right side of her reader and shoots a quick grin in Effie’s direction. 

There’s a folder on Effie’s screen labeled ‘Favorites’ and Effie touches it. It’s password protected and when Effie frowns at it, a prompt pops up in a small green bubble. 

‘What was the first piece of furniture that you bought for your apartment?’ 

Effie bites her lip to stop herself from laughing. It’s ridiculous and endearing and everything that she wants. 

‘Mahogany table’, she types in with slightly trembling fingers. 

Only Haymitch knows this about her, about her weakness for the rich, dark wood and how much she had saved to buy that table. The one that reminded her of her father’s study, his bookshelves filled with large tomes. All paper. An old luxury that was taken away when he died. 

As soon as she finishes typing, a program starts loading onto her reader and Effie holds her breath for a moment before she realizes that it’s a sort of instant communication device. 

A bubble pops up, filled with writing and it takes Effie a second to figure out that it’s Johanna. 

‘ **Pretty handy, huh? It’s all Beetee’s invention. I swear, his brain makes me terrified most of the time but then, sometimes he comes up with toys that just give me that good, down-low tingle. I mean, can you imagine all that intensity focused on you? All that knowledge?’**

Effie flushes darkly before typing a reply. ‘ _Hush, you heathen. What’s happening? Why did you move in with me?_ ’

**‘They’re trying to figure out what’s going to happen to all of us now that Coin is dead. Elections for the new president are happening as we speak and from what I understand, the process is getting a little heated. And by a little heated, I’m talking about the fact that I saw Haymitch hiding three knives on him before he went into one of their meetings and Plutarch looking like he hasn’t slept since Katniss released that arrow.**

**I’m here for you.**

**Plutarch and Haymitch figured that they wouldn’t try anything if you weren’t alone, and _especially_ if you were together with a Victor. I agreed. They’re brokering the deal to get you and the mockingjay’s prep team out safely and so far, it looks like it might work. We don’t want to take any chances though.**

**That’s it. Enough talking for today. We don’t want to seem suspicious, and I don’t know about you- but I have no idea how long we’ll be in here and I really don’t want to lose the only thing that might keep me sane… Somewhat sane. ‘**

Johanna doesn’t let Effie process the information before yawning obnoxiously, sitting up and then stripping off her shirt in one brief movement. She then flops back down, raising her reader closer to her face and looking for all the world like she’s settling in for the long haul. 

“Um,” Effie coughs, pointedly not looking in the direction of Johanna’s naked, scarred upper half, “what’s with the nudity?” 

“Oh calm your tits, dollface,” Johanna drawls back, “it’s not like you don’t have a pair of your own.” She then makes a face, “now stop interrupting me from reading-“ pausing, she clicks on her selection and looks like she’s about to start scalping people indiscriminately. 

 

Effie moves to the edge of her bed just in case. 

“The Wings of His Desire,” Johanna finishes in a dark tone that promises terrible retribution to Beetee for loading her reader full of romance stories. 

Effie decides to keep quiet about the fact that she has a couple of adventure stories on hers. 

Or at least until Johanna puts her shirt back on.


End file.
